As agricultural interests prepare for another growing season, soil moisture in Richland County is near normal to unusually moist, and about to get a lot more moist. / NOAA

Written by

Todd Hill

News Journal

Despite the impulse to begin today by talking about an approaching winter storm, in honor of April Fools’ Day, I decided that would just be too cruel.

In fact, it appears we have finally turned the corner into spring, with a forecast filled with seasonal, and even above-normal, temperatures for the next seven days. But you know what they say about April showers? We’ll be reinforcing our familiarity with that phenomenon for the remainder of the work week.

Until that happens, however, look for a dry and very mild Tuesday. The forecast high temperature is a little tricky thanks to the proximity of a cold front, presently knocking on our doorstep. The boundary will pass through dry (northern Ohio had a smidgen of rain early this morning), but there are of course clouds associated with it.

If sunshine becomes plentiful before the front arrives, some locales in the Mansfield area could approach 70 degrees. It’s expected to become quite windy, however, both in front of and behind the cold front, with gusts topping 40 mph.

We may come to curse this frontal boundary as the week wears on, as it’s expected to become stationary over Ohio by Wednesday. As it does so, a series of increasingly intense low pressure systems will ride up along it, dropping several periods of rain on us beginning with the latter half of Wednesday.

At least one computer forecast model has two to three inches of rain falling on us through Friday, which would likely raise some flooding concerns as our ground is already quite moist, which is typical for the beginning of April. Thunderstorms will also become increasingly likely through Thursday and especially Friday.

Once all that weather finally clears our region, Saturday will feature a return to chilly weather, with a forecast high temperature of only 44 degrees. But the chill won’t last. In fact, if we can make it through next week without any appearances of snow, we should be done with it once and for all.

Then we can start talking about the last spring frost, which last year didn’t occur around here until late May.

Below are the weather statistics for Monday, March 31 at my location 4 miles north-northwest of Fredericktown, Ohio: